(I thought it was probably a bit more pertinent to make a new thread rather than necro-post the old one. But for anyone interested, here is the thread I originally posted.)

Hello again fine people!

I took a lot of your advice, reworked my characters a bit, let them sit so I can come back with fresh eyes, and touched them up some more.I have now some updated character art, and I would greatly appreciate it if someone could pick this apart, tell me everything you don't like about it, everything that needs to improve, everything that works, etc. Feel free to dig in and make me cry. I want honest feedback.

Try to look at this image as if it were a sample straight out of the final version of its game.

I don't know... I can see a fair amount of personality in that pink-haired girl. That subtle smile and the way she looks off and up to the side. Sure her pose is bland, but I think she's hiding something. She seems more captivating than this guy who is merely unimpressed with his steak.

But I do fully agree with the underlying point that expressiveness holds a greater value than simply matching a style.

So are you saying my characters are lifeless?I'm a little taken aback by this. I thought I put plenty of expressiveness into these characters. The magician has a broad smile and such an upright demeanor. The ranger has her whole body turned away from the direction she's facing. Granted the bunny-girl is posed a little lifeless, but, well actually that IS her personality. And besides, this isn't promo art, it's in-game art. I still have to match some utilitarian issues of how they fit into the game.

I know I'm sounding defensive here, but I do understand that I'm seeing this from a wildly different perspective than anyone else. Does anyone else here feel that these characters aren't expressive enough? Which ones? What seems bland about them?

To be honest, Mario isn't a very expressive character, You can't tell much about what he's all about just by looking at him, I mean, he has a mustache, wears overalls, and I guess he has a big nose. When I first saw him when I was little, I thought he looked stupid, he wore overalls, I thought Super Mario was some sort of cartoon for little kids, like Sesame Street. Of course, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, besides, it was 1981, and all they had was 4 tiles to make a recognizable video game character, so let's look at a character from around the 16-bit era. How about Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario's arch rival.During the early 1990s, he was pretty well portrayed, just by looking at him, you could tell that he was hip, cool, and edgy, with all of his cheeky smirk, finger in the air. You could also tell that he was super fast by the spikes on the back of his head and his red sneakers. Of course, this is probably due to their slight overuse in tiles, IMO. But I'd say that he lost his edge after about Sonic Heroes. Now he's just, meh. Nothing too exciting for our eyes. I mean, you can still tell that he runs fast, but that's about it. He looks like he belongs on Sesame Street.

Edit: The last picture of Mario was too big, so I changed it.

Last edited by DementedPurple on Sun Sep 24, 2017 6:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

During the early 1990s, he was pretty well portrayed, just by looking at him, you could tell that he was hip, cool, and edgy, with all of his cheeky smirk, finger in the air. You could also tell that he was super fast by the spikes on the back of his head and his red sneakers. Of course, this is probably due to their slight overuse in tiles, IMO.

I've also noticed the aesthetics are awfully similar to Super Mario World.

Yup! Sure is!

Actually I've been drawing inspiration from a lot of various games, but the Mario titles shine through the most because they come closest to what I'm looking for; having a cartoony look and also having low-detail almost minimalist aesthetics.I might change it a bit and add more detail later on, I've certainly noticed that I'm adding more detail into my later tiles, but that's what I was going for when I started at least.By comparison, some tiles I made later:https://imgur.com/8fIGXId

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